Italian television presenter Vittorio Brumotti and his cameraman were attacked by a group of migrants while trying to film a drug dealing area in the city of Reggio Emilia.
Mr Brumotti, who appears on the satirical Italian television programme Striscia la Notizia, was attacked along with his colleague nearly immediately after arriving in the Reggiane neighbourhood, the former location of a major factory in the city that has largely turned into a drug-dealing area.
According to a report from the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, Brumotti was attacked by mostly African migrants who threw stones and bottles from the upper floors of the disused factories.
Brumotti and his cameraman immediately called the police. Within a few minutes, a dozen local police and Carabinieri arrived, but the migrants had dispersed to nearby camps and officers were unable to identify the attackers.
The assault comes just three weeks after Brumotti was attacked in the city of Brescia, again by a violent migrant. The presenter published a video of the attack on Instagram, which showed an African migrant trying to attack him and his crew in their van:
View this post on Instagram
“It was a violent assault but all of this will not stop us,” he wrote. He later said of the attack, saying: “It’s the most violent assault I’ve ever suffered. I feared the worst… but this does not discourage me from going on in the battle to rid the squares of Italy of drugs.”
Last year, while filming drug-dealing areas in the city of Milan, Brumotti had to be hospitalised after yet another attack.
Populist Senator and leader of the League party Matteo Salvini has expressed his support for Brumotti’s work, saying: “Come on Vittorio!”
Brumotti is not the only television presenter to be attacked by migrants in recent years. Journalist Francesca Parisella was attacked live on camera in 2017 while filming migrants’ living conditions around the area of Rome’s Termini railway station.
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